


9 to 5 and Odd Jobs

by TrashyMartel (astrozombiies)



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fluff, Katya is a business woman tm, Lesbian AU, Slow Burn, Trixie works at a diner, Who also happens be the co-worker Trixie's mom hates, but she's trying to become a country star
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-06-26 23:08:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15673155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrozombiies/pseuds/TrashyMartel
Summary: After she graduated from college, Trixie is still working at the same diner she worked at as a teenager. That doesn’t mean she has given up on her dream to become the next Dolly Parton. It’s just taking a bit longer than she expected. And Dolly probably wasn’t distracted by the beautiful Russian woman that Trixie keeps meeting everywhere.Or, the one where Trixie falls in love with her mother’s least favorite co-worker.





	1. Don’t Open Doors For (Beautiful) Strangers

**Author's Note:**

> Hey hey hey. This basically happened when I was working on another fic. It might be longer or shorter than 11 chapters but that is approximately what I'm going for. 
> 
> English isn't my first language but I went to uni in America for a semester so I like to think that qualifies me to write fan fiction. I also had some art classes there so I also like to think that qualifies me to maybe make art for this somewhere in the future (lmk if that's something you'd be into). 
> 
> Please also let me know if you like it and want me to continue!

Trixie loved to visit her mother, she truly did. But, now she was walking from the bus stop to her mother’s house, she regretted leaving her apartment. Her hands and feet were freezing and being surprised by a downpour only made the situation worse. Trixie sighed and scolded herself for not checking the weather before she left.

As a kid, she loved storms. When it wasn’t too cold, her mom sometimes would let her play in the rain after Trixie endlessly begged her to let her go outside. She would stomp around in hand-me-down rain boots until her mother yelled for her to come back inside again. Right now, she couldn’t bring herself to enjoy the rain even a little bit, because it was fucking cold outside.

Her wet clothes started to feel heavy and her skin started to sting underneath them. Trixie pulled out her phone to call her mom, hopefully, she’d be able to pick her up. After letting it ring for a minute, Trixie figured her mom wasn’t going to answer and hung up again.

She continued her way over the leaf covered sidewalks. Briefly, Trixie considered finding shelter under one of the trees but most of them were too bald to offer any protection. She was almost soaking wet anyway and waiting around for it to stop raining was not going to fix that any sooner than just pacing her way through the rain.

 _It’s just a fifteen-minute walk_ , she told herself. It was less if she walked fast and she was almost halfway there. After a while, she recognized the well-kept front yard from the house where they moved to after they got out of the trailer park where Trixie grew up.

When she reached the front door, it swung open almost immediately. Her mom had already seen her coming from her kitchen window and came running to the door right away.

“Trixie, poor child, you look like a drowned raccoon. I would’ve come and picked you up if I’d known you were coming,” she said looking at her completely soaked daughter.

The heavy makeup Trixie often wore was now ruined and running down her very unhappy face. To her exasperation, it stopped raining as soon as she stepped into the warmth of her mom’s home, almost as if the world had decided to bully her today.

“I tried to call you, but you didn’t pick up,” Trixie said. She put her pink bag down and kicked her cowboy boots off. 

“When did you call? I lost my phone today,” Deborah said.

Trixie wasn’t surprised at all that her mom had lost her phone. When she still lived at her mom’s house she helped her countless times to look for her keys, phone, or whatever else she lost that day.   

“When did you last have it?" Trixie asked.

When Deborah lost something “today” there was a big chance that she lost it way before then and had just noticed that it was missing.  

"I don't know. I don't use it as often as you kids nowadays. I haven't got a clue where it could be," her mom answered to no one’s surprise.

Trixie tried to help her mom figure out when she last had her phone while she put her wet coat over the heater. She gave up when the only thing her mother remembered was that she still had her phone in the morning but couldn't remember where. Trixie moved her boots and backpack next to the heater to dry and grabbed a Tupperware container from her bag. Miraculously, it was still kind of warm.

“I brought homemade brownies. It’s Roberta’s recipe,” Trixie said with a proud smile as she gave it to her mom.

At the diner where she worked, it was an honor to get Roberta's famous brownie recipe. Almost a bigger honor than winning the title employee of the month. Which was impressive, considering the fact that Roberta had been the only employee of the month ever since she opened Queen’s Diner herself.

“Thank you, that's very nice of you, honey,” Deborah said. “Let me get you a towel so you can dry yourself off.” She quickly put away the container and ran upstairs to fetch her a towel. 

Trixie watched the raindrops drip from her hair and splash down on the wooden floor.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I haven’t been able to go grocery shopping yet. Is it alright if I go before it starts raining again?” her mom asked when she came back down again.

She handed Trixie the towel. Her makeup left dark stains as she dried her face off.

“I'll be fine. I’ll just take a shower and eat all your cookies while you’re gone,” Trixie said with a smirk.

“Don’t you dare even glance at my cookies, Beatrice. Don’t joke about something like that,” her mom said.

Trixie almost felt like a small child again when her mother talked to her with that tone. Her mom’s cookies really were nothing to joke about. Deborah almost cared about those damned cookies more than she cared about anything else in her life. She was passive-aggressively trying to outbake Carol from marketing to assert dominance in their book club or something.

However, Trixie was extremely grateful for this suburban soccer mom type of aggression. It meant she got to eat the cookies when book club was over. Well, whatever was left after her younger half-sister and her best friend had gone through a good amount of them.

“Is Farrah home?” Trixie asked.

“No, so don’t eat my cookies and try and blame it on her,” her mom joked, but there was still some seriousness behind it.

“That’s not why I asked,” Trixie lied. It was exactly why she asked.

“I think she'll be home before I am. I told her to call me on the landline if she was going to be late,” Deborah grabbed her keys and kissed Trixie’s forehead.

“Oh okay, have fun grocery shopping. I’m gonna take a shower before I catch a cold,” Trixie said. 

“Alright honey, I’ll be back home around six,” her mom stepped outside and closed the door behind her.

After a long hot shower, Trixie walked into her old bedroom and put on a dress that was left in the closet after she moved out. Either Trixie had gained a little weight, or the dress shrank since she last worn it, because it fit way tighter than she remembered.

She put on her make-up again and then looked around the room hoping to find a hairbrush when she didn’t find it she moved on to the other pink colored bedroom in the house, her sister’s room. Trixie and Farrah had shared their love for the color pink from a young age. And neither of them had ever outgrown it.   

It didn’t take long for Trixie to find a brush in her sister’s room. She sat down at the dressing table and started to untangle her blonde curls. As she finished brushing her hair out, she heard the landline ring. Trixie ran downstairs to answer what she expected to be a call from her sister. 

“Hello,” she said cheerily when she picked up.

Instead of hearing her sister’s voice, Trixie was greeted by an unfamiliar voice with a slight foreign accent.

“Hi, this is Katya Zamolodchikova. I’m looking for Deborah Mattel, is she there?” Her name sounded somewhat familiar, but Trixie couldn’t remember where her mom would know her from.

“I’m her daughter. You actually just missed her, is there anything I can do?” Trixie offered.

“Do you know if she lost her phone? I found an iPhone 4 next to her desk at work,” the woman said. Even without the description, Trixie would’ve known it was her mom’s.

“She did, she was already looking for it. Thank you so much for calling,” Trixie said while curling the telephone cord around her finger. Trixie hated calling with strangers but being able to play with the cord of her mom’s old phone almost made up for it.

“I can bring it by if that’s okay, it’s on my drive home,” the woman offered.

Trixie didn’t feel like having any visitors over at the moment, but her mom probably needed her phone and she wasn’t going to be in office until Monday.

“That would be very nice of you. Do you have the address?” Trixie asked.

“I think I found it,” the woman then read it out loud to confirm she had the right address.

“Yep, that’s it! Thank you so much for calling.”

“No problem, eh- what’s your name?”

“Trixie.”

The woman repeated her name. “I will be there in about twenty minutes.” 

After Trixie hung up the phone she walked to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. Which she had been craving ever since she stepped walked through the door completely soaked in rainwater.

While the water was boiling she hopped up the counter and checked the notifications on her phone. She had some messages in a group chat, which she chose to ignore and replied to a text from her roommate instead.

 **Pearl  
** Hey! Violet is coming over for dinner… you’re okay with that, right? 

 **Trixie  
** Sure, I won’t be home until after dinner, though.

Trixie liked Violet, but she was secretly happy that she didn’t have to be there to have dinner with her and Pearl. They were way too nauseating and Trixie’s relationship status would be inevitably brought up at some point during the evening.

She was well aware that her last serious relationship ended in junior year of college. And despite what her friends thought, she was perfectly content with just hooking up with someone once in a while.

 **Pearl  
** Visiting your mom tonight?

 **Trixie  
** Already there!

 **Trixie  
** She’s doing groceries atm and one of her co-workers is dropping off her phone in a sec.

 **Trixie  
** If I get serial killed make sure the news channels pick a flattering picture of me. 

 **Pearl  
** Like this one?

Pearl then sent the most hideous picture, she had of Trixie. She once secretly took it while Trixie was eating and despite her desperate pleas to delete it, Pearl cherished it like a loved one.  

 **Trixie  
** Delete it fat.

A few minutes after Trixie sent the message Pearl answered with a picture of a headstone with the ugly picture poorly photoshopped on it. _Here lies Beatrice Joanne Mattel. Not a great person. Deserved what happened to her_ , was written on it in comic sans.  

 **Trixie  
** Please get a life before I kill you. 

 **Pearl  
** I love you too bby xxx

Trixie sent a row of middle finger emojis and put her phone away.

A sudden doorbell sounded through the house. Trixie hadn’t expected her mother’s co-worker to be here this soon. When she opened the door, she was greeted by a well-dressed woman with prominent cheekbones and piercing blue eyes. A light blonde wavy bob just touched her shoulders.

Apparently, it was raining again, but at least this woman had been smart enough to bring an umbrella to shelter her from the bad weather.

 Judging by the way she dressed, she was definitely higher up than her mom. Or at least wanted to be. Contradictory to Deborah and her colleagues, she looked young. Couldn’t be any older than maybe in her mid-thirties. The professional clothes almost looked out of place on her.

“Hi, miss Zamo-?” Trixie tried her best not to butcher the name, hell she tried her best to even remember what it was. 

“Oh, just call me Katya,” the woman winked. “I have the phone,” she said as she looked for it in an expensive looking shoulder bag.

“Well, it’s in somewhere in here,” she was still digging around with a bit of a sheepish smile on her face.

“Why don’t you come in?” Trixie asked. “It’s probably easier when you don’t have to hold an umbrella.”

“Yeah, probably,” Katya chuckled as she closed her umbrella and walked in.

 “I was actually just making myself a cup of tea. Do you also want some?” Trixie offered.

 After all, it was raining again and an umbrella alone couldn’t protect you against the cold. Offering Katya tea to warm up a little was just a nice gesture. _Anyone would’ve done this_ , Trixie justified to herself. This had nothing to do with the fact that she thought Katya was attractive. 

“I would kill for some tea right now, thank y- Oh there it is,” Katya finally got the phone from her bag and gave it to Trixie with a smile. 

She had the most beautiful smile Trixie had ever seen. She didn’t even know it was possible to have teeth that straight and white.

“Thank you so much,” Trixie smiled back, a bit self-conscious now about her own not so straight teeth. Although, she grew up in rural Wisconsin, she knew she should be happy enough that the whole gang was still there. “You said you also wanted tea, right?”

“Yes please,” Katya said with a smile still plastered on her face.  

“Do you like mint tea? I have some fresh mint in the kitchen,” Trixie said. 

Deborah grew her own food and herbs in the backyard and in her kitchen and Trixie fully took advantage of that. She also tried to do it at her own apartment, but she didn’t have the time to take care of plants and Pearl didn’t care about any plants she couldn’t smoke.

“Sounds great,” Katya took off her coat and followed Trixie to the kitchen where she sat down at the breakfast bar and watched Trixie cut off some leaves from the mint plant.

“I wanted to offer you some brownies I made yesterday, but I’m not sure where my mom left them,” Trixie said while looking around the kitchen for the container she had given to her mom earlier.

“You bring your mom homemade brownies? That’s so sweet,” Katya said.

Trixie didn’t know why she would care about her mom’s co-worker thinking she was sweet, but she felt something flutter in her stomach.

“Thank you,” Trixie smiled. “I kind of have to bring my own cookies here. Lord knows what will happen to me if I even think about my mother’s homemade cookies,” she continued dramatically while handing Katya a cup of tea.

“Because of the book club thing with Carol?” Katya asked.

“Oh wow, you know about that?” Trixie had always assumed it was more of a silent rivalry between the two women.

“The entire office does. It’s crazy how people can get so upset over a bunch of cookies,” Katya grinned.

“In my mom’s defense, her cookies really are the best and Carol has no business telling people that hers are better,” Trixie said jokingly.

“Oh, I know. We had an office-wide cookie test,” Katya said. “It was blown off by the HR department before we officially could decide on a winner, though.” 

Trixie screeched with laughter at the idea of her mother forcing an entire office to eat her cookies over some petty feud, only to be shut down by an HR department before anyone could decide who was better. Katya looked at Trixie with a startled expression on her face.

“Jesus, you have the best laugh,” she grinned.

“Uh- thanks. I didn’t mean to startle you, though,” Trixie said a bit embarrassed. “I never met my dad, but I think he might’ve been a banshee.” 

Trixie immediately regretted making the joke. Deadbeat dad jokes weren’t exactly crowd pleasers, and it wouldn’t be the first time she put someone off with her dark sense of humor. But to her relief, Katya laughed at the joke.

It was way easier to get along with Katya than Trixie initially thought she would. Sure, she thought Katya was hot right away, but Trixie had also assumed that she took herself way too seriously from the way she was dressed. Surprisingly, Katya didn’t have a stick up her ass and Trixie enjoyed talking to her until the rain settled down and Katya left.

* * *

“Trix, I’m home! Can you help me carry the groceries?” Deborah called as she barged in the door hands full with bags.

Trixie got off the couch and took over the bags her mother brought in. She put them on the breakfast bar and started to put the groceries away while Deborah went back to the car to grab the other bags.

“What 's for dinner?” Trixie asked when her mom walked back into the kitchen.

“Pesto garden pasta,” she answered. “I got this recipe from Linda and it’s vegetarian. I’ve actually been waiting for you to come over, so I could make it.”  
  
Trixie had no idea who this entire Linda was, but she hoped she was a good cook. Trixie was in desperate need of new vegetarian recipes. She was getting tired of the same three meals she cooked every week.

“Sounds good! By the way, your co-worker came here earlier,” Trixie mentioned, still putting away the groceries.  

“Oh, which one?” Deborah asked.  

“Katya,” Trixie said, but the name didn’t seem to ring a bell with her mom. “She had a long last name. Blonde bob, red lipstick.”

Deborah’s usual kind expression faded away immediately after the description.

“Yekaterina Zamolodchikova? What did she want?” She asked. The sudden resent in her mother’s voice surprised Trixie.

“A friend of yours?” she joked.

“I told you about her. You know my boss’s daughter? The one with the dead raccoon on her desk,” Deborah said. “She always hangs around with Ginger and Kennedy from legal and Karen from finance.”

It finally hit Trixie, whenever her mom was talking about ‘Yekaterina’ Trixie had always imagined a bitter old Russian cat lady with a weird obsession for taxidermy. She had never expected her to be hot and around her thirties.

Deborah endlessly complained about Ginger, Kennedy, Karen, and Katya when she was talking about her co-workers. According to her, they were monsters who loved to stand around a water cooler and just talk straight shit about everyone during their lunch hour.

It’s not as if Deborah and her work friends didn’t do exactly the same during their book club, but apparently, it was different when they did it.

Deborah complained about Katya the most out of all her co-workers. She was certain Katya got special treatment because her father was the CEO of the company.

“Oh, her,” Trixie said dryly. “She actually seemed nice to me. She came by because she found your phone,” Trixie handed over the phone to her mom who checked to see if she had any new notifications and then put it away.

“I guess everyone can act human for a few minutes,” Deborah said. 

Trixie wasn’t sure what to make of that, but she wasn’t going to believe her mom blindly. Before she could respond to her mom’s remark, she already changed the subject.

“Oh, Aja’s having dinner with us tonight,” Deborah said acting surprised.

It wasn’t exactly news to Trixie. Farrah and Aja had been friends for so long that they practically were conjoined twins by now. Sometimes distant relatives would even think Aja was family. And at this point she basically was family. Trixie often wondered if there was something more than friendship going on between them.

As if on cue Farrah came storming through the door with Aja by her side. 

“Trixie! I didn’t know you were visiting today,” she cried as she ran over to give Trixie a hug. She was followed by Aja who gave her a hug as well.

“I wasn’t planning to, but I made way too many brownies yesterday and I figured I’d bring them by,” Trixie said. It was only partly true. She was a bit tight on money this month and she was fully planning on taking her mom’s leftovers before leaving.    

“Ooh, where are they?” Aja asked already looking around to find them.

“Girls, we’re eating dinner first,” Deborah said. 

Aja gave her a disappointed look and then expectantly looked at Trixie as if she could somehow pull the brownies out of her ass. Trixie also received a disappointed look when she didn’t do that.

The three girls set the table, while Deborah finished the meal. Trixie thanked god when it tasted good because that meant she now had four different she could cook every week. Tradition-wise, everyone told what they had been up to that day while eating their dinner.

“I had some tea with one of mom’s least favorite co-workers today,” Trixie said nonchalantly when it was her turn.

“You had tea with her? You never told me that,” Deborah said, almost sounding shocked.

At the time, Trixie didn’t think it was important enough to tell her mom, but apparently, it was. She was now staring at her waiting for Trixie to tell more.

“Yeah, it was raining, and I was already making tea, so I invited her in. I didn’t know it was _the_ Yekaterina you always talk about,” Trixie said. “Besides she introduced herself as Katya to me.”

“Wait, who is that again?” Farrah asked.

“The one with the dead raccoon on the desk,” Deborah said before Trixie could answer the question herself.

“You work with someone with a dead raccoon on their desk?” Aja asked.

Trixie was surprised Aja didn’t know this because Deborah loved pointing out that Katya had a taxidermied raccoon on her desk. Sure, it was a bit strange, but Trixie never really understood what the big fuss around it really was.

“Yes, it’s a taxidermied raccoon,” Deborah said. “She put googly eyes on it and called it Cheryl.”

Trixie almost spat out her water. If there was one of her mom’s friends that Trixie hated it would be fucking Cheryl, and her ‘ _I treat retail workers like shit because I think I’m better than everyone else_ ’ attitude. Both Farrah and Aja stifled their laughter.

“Trixie,” Deborah raised her voice and loudly put her glass on the table. Trixie cringed at the sudden noise. She hated how her body still reacted to loud noises like that.

“I’m sorry,” her mom said as she noticed both her daughters had flinched away. They all sat in silence for a little while until Farrah started talking about something that happened at school.

* * *

When Trixie came home Pearl was sitting on the couch watching project runway and Violet was already gone. It smelled like weed. By now Trixie had gotten so used to the smell that she barely registered it. She went straight to the fridge to grab a Blue Moon. The last two bottles were hidden in the back behind some leftovers from Pearl.

“Still alive?” Pearl asked when she noticed that Trixie was back home. 

“Nope, just came here to haunt you and drink all the beer,” Trixie said with her head still in the fridge.

When she got the bottles, she shut the door and wrote _‘beer’_ on the whiteboard they used for their groceries.

 “Jokes aside, she was pretty hot,” Trixie said. She gave Pearl the second bottle and let herself fall down on the couch next to her roommate.

“What happened?” Pearl asked looking very disinterested.

Trixie knew her roommate long enough to know that she wasn’t actually disinterested. She just had no facial expressions other than stoned and she had a voice to match it. 

“Nothing much, we just had tea and she left before my mom got back,” Trixie said.

“Then why was she at your mom’s house?” Pearl asked.      

“Oh my god. My mom forgot her phone at work, and she dropped it off. When I told my mom she came by, she fully told me she actually hates her,” Trixie said dramatically

“Wait, what? Why?” Pearl now looked semi-interested which was a lot for her.

“Because she’s the boss’s daughter or something and she named the dead raccoon on her desk after my mom’s work bestie,” Trixie said while she rolled her eyes.

“She has a dead raccoon on her desk?” Pearl looked shocked. Probably, because she actually thought that it was a dead raccoon pulled from a nearby dumpster.

“Like a stuffed dead one. Not a rotting raccoon corpse, you dumb fuck,” Trixie laughed.

“And you’re into her? She must be really hot,” Pearl said.

“Shut up,” Trixie hit Pearl in the face with a pillow, but she was too stoned to even really react to it.

 

 


	2. It's a Small World After All

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi!
> 
> This took a little longer to write than anticipated, but I finally got around finishing this chapter today. Thank you for all the sweet comments on the last chapter, I really appreciated them and they honestly made my day. I kind of forgot to answer them but I will try to do so from now on :).
> 
> Also if you want to follow me on Tumblr trashymartel is my main blog, I also have a sideblog (mountainbikingvampirebitch) where I reblog all of my art to. I'd love to answer questions/talk about my fic on my sideblog (bc no one I know irl follows me there) if you guys are into that. (You can still send hate mail to my main tho). Anyway thank you so much for reading guys!

When Trixie came home from her shift at the diner, she had sworn to herself that she wasn’t going to leave the couch until it was time to move from the couch to her bed. And yet she was about to step into a lesbian bar with a guitar case in her hand.

The Closet was originally meant to be a regular gay bar instead of a lesbian bar, however, that didn’t stop the majority of the customers from being a lesbian. Mainly because it was the only gay bar in town where the straight girls with their stupid bachelorette parties hadn’t taken over the place, yet.

When Trixie stepped into the hallway she was greeted by a poster bearing her own face announcing the bar’s Thursday night program. She was a regular performer on Thursdays. It was a nice break from standing behind the bar there, which she also did three days in the week. The place was empty apart from a few regulars. It was still early, though, and Trixie knew the place well enough to know that more people would come in later on in the evening.

“Hey Willam, you look great,” Trixie yelled at the person behind the bar.

Willam was a drag queen who actually fit in better with the crowd that went to the other gay clubs. But she was stuck working here because she was good friends with Courtney, the owner of the place.

“I know, I can see my reflection on the beer tap,” she yelled back. “What are you doing here?”

Trixie rarely left her house on Friday evenings because she needed to wake up at an ungodly hour the next day for her morning shift. When she did leave her house on Fridays it was because Pearl forced her to go somewhere. Pearl wasn’t here right now, she was at home  watching TV snug under a blanket.

“Adore still has no voice so I’m playing instead.” Trixie put her guitar case on the makeshift stage and sat down on a barstool at the bar. If she kept yelling back and forth with Willam for the rest of the conversation she also wouldn’t have a voice left to sing with.

“Are you also going to help me behind the bar tonight?” Willam asked sweetly.

It didn’t look like she needed any help. She had been scrubbing at the same, already clean, surface ever since Trixie came in, probably only to make it look like she was actually doing something.

“Yeah, it seems like you’re really struggling with that imaginary dirt right there,” Trixie said. “But, I can’t help you tonight. I probably won’t even stay here for long after I’m done playing.”

“You suck,” Willam sighed. “Anyway, Courtney is over there. She’ll help you with your stuff.”

Adore was usually the one who helped her get ready for her gigs, but Trixie doubted that she would be coming today.

When Trixie was about to walk over to Courtney, Willam stopped her.

“Wait, can you give this to Alaska? She asked me, but I didn’t want to do it,” Willam said as she handed Trixie a bottle of soda. Trixie rolled her eyes but grabbed it anyway, knowing that Alaska wouldn’t get the drink at all if she didn’t do it.

Courtney was cleaning a table next to Alaska who was busy with replacing a broken string light that had been stuck on blinking mode for the past few weeks. Trixie wondered how many people got a seizure from the endless flashing before Courtney had finally decided to replace it.

“The epilepsy trap is finally gone,” Trixie exclaimed.

Both Courtney and Alaska looked up from what they were doing.

“Trixie! I’m glad that you’re here,” Courtney said. “I’ll help you in a second. Alaska, can you finish the tables for me when you’re done?” She left the cloth on the table and headed towards the bar to grab whatever it was that she needed.

“Willam asked me to bring you this,” Trixie said as she dropped a coaster on the table and put the drink down on it.

“Thank you so much, I asked for it twenty minutes ago,” Alaska said.

“Willam is surprisingly productive today, huh?”

Before Alaska could answer the door swung open almost hitting Trixie in the process, a blue-haired girl entered the bar, looking around until she spotted Trixie.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” she said with a raspy voice when she realized Trixie stood right behind the door that she had aggressively swung open.

“Shouldn’t you be in bed, taking care of your voice instead of hitting people with doors?” Trixie joked.

“I’m not sick. My voice just fucked me over. It really sucks, man,” Adore said. Her voice was barely audible. Trixie nodded sympathetically. She really felt bad for her, she knew Adore had been looking forward to playing tonight after she had to cancel last week as well.

“So, when are we sound checking?” Adore asked.

“Please tell me you didn’t come all the way here for just that,” Trixie said.

“I did,” Adore said. “I wanted to help you because I’m a good friend.”

“Oh my god, you idiot,” Trixie said, visibly touched that Adore came all the way to help her. Even though it wasn’t necessary at all. “I’ll tell Courtney you’re here.”

 

* * *

 

Trixie didn’t want to admit it, but she was nervous as hell. Way more people showed up whenever Adore was scheduled to play. Trixie couldn’t wait to disappoint each and every one of them. Luckily, the nerves ebbed away when she stepped onto the stage. The bar wasn’t full by any means, but she still had a bigger audience than usual.

“Hi guys,” Trixie said into the microphone. “Adore can’t sing tonight because she still has no voice.” A few disappointed noises emerged from the crowd. “I know, it sucks, but I’m the next best thing they found behind the dumpster out back.”

Trixie grinned at the truth of her own joke. Her setlist for the evening was put together twenty minutes before she left her apartment. And she picked out popular songs everyone knew, so the audience could sing when she forgot the lyrics herself. It seemed to be working, though, the audience sang along the entire time.

“The last song I’m going to play tonight is one of my own songs. If you come here often, you might know that I make country music,” Trixie said. She heard someone groan and couldn’t help but laugh loudly. “Girl, you couldn’t have guessed that from the way I look?”

“This last song is for the girl who just groaned when I said I play country music. It’s called Break Your Heart.”

Trixie let out a relieved sigh when she was done and stepped off the stage, happy that she didn’t get booed off.

“Trixie! You were great tonight,” Adore pulled both Trixie and her guitar in for a hug.

“Thank you,” Trixie said. “And, thank you for coming here even though you should be at home in bed drinking tea with lots of honey.”

“Of course! I’m a good friend remember?” Adore smiled. “By the way, can you call me when you get home? It’s nothing serious but my voice can’t handle this.” Her voice had gotten so soft that she was basically whispering in Trixie’s ear to be heard, which wasn’t ideal in a loud bar.

“I will. Please take care of yourself,” Trixie said and hugged Adore goodbye. She wanted to stay a bit longer than this, but she still had an early shift tomorrow at the diner. After she also said her goodbyes to Willam, Alaska, and Courtney, she grabbed her guitar and left.

When Trixie stepped outside, she put on her headphones and started walking home on autopilot. She had walked this road so often that she could do it blind if she had to. She might even be able to avoid the cracks in the sidewalk while doing it. As she turned around the corner of the street, she bumped her guitar case into someone who thought it would be a marvelous idea to stand in the middle of a sidewalk to smoke a cigarette.

“Oh shit, sorry,” Trixie said with no sincerity in her voice.

Yes, she knew she had been daydreaming instead of paying any attention to her surroundings, but she wasn’t the one smoking a cigarette in the middle of a sidewalk. It wasn’t until the person called out her name that she realized who she had walked into.

“Katya. Oh my god, I’m sorry I didn’t realize-, I was-,” Trixie blurted out, suddenly feeling way more guilty than a couple of seconds ago.

“I’m fine, don’t worry,” Katya said, and smiled friendly at her, causing crow’s-feet to form in the corners of her eyes. “What are you doing here dragging a guitar case around?”

“I was walking home. I just came back from The Closet.”

Trixie didn’t know why she was being so specific. Katya probably didn’t even know what The Closet was. The majority of straight people in this town didn’t know it. She should’ve just said that she came back from a bar.

“You play there often?” Katya asked.

“Almost every week.” Trixie didn’t tell her she also worked there as a bartender. She wasn’t ashamed of it, but she also didn’t want to make it look like she was only allowed to play there because she worked there.

“What days? I’d love to see you play sometime,” she said.

Trixie didn’t know why, but the idea of Katya coming to see her made her feel more nervous than she had been the entire evening. She wasn’t going to let that shine through, though. Because it sort of stupid that she felt that way, to begin with.

“Thursdays, you should also meet me after, cause I can get you free drinks,” Trixie smiled and winked. Overcompensating with fake confidence was Trixie’s go to move when she felt nervous, that and bad jokes.

She wondered if she should ask Katya if she knew where The Closet was and give her the address. But, she decided not to ask her, assuming that Katya only asked her to be polite. Like when you tell your old high school friends you should have lunch together soon when you failed to avoid them at the supermarket, fully knowing it will never happen.

When Trixie came home she dropped everything by the coatrack, too tired to put away her stuff properly. She’d put it away tomorrow after her shift at the diner.

“I fully hit someone with my guitar on the street again,” Trixie said to Pearl who hadn’t moved from her spot on the couch since Trixie left. Pearl didn’t look surprised. Trixie walking into someone because she wasn’t paying attention wasn’t too rare of an occurrence.

“It was my mom’s co-worker,” Trixie then said to get a little more attention from Pearl.

“Really, the hot one?” Pearl asked.

“Oh my god, don’t call her that!”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, because it’s weird?” Trixie said. It was weird, right? People weren’t attracted to their mom’s co-workers, especially not their mom’s least favorite co-workers.

“Oh okay, did she say anything?”

“We only talked a little, she asked me when I play at the bar, though,” Trixie said while she played with a loose threat from her blouse.

Pearl smirked and wiggled her eyebrows at Trixie, she definitely read way more into it than she should have.

“Ugh stop that, you creep. She was just being polite,” Trixie said.

She pushed Pearl over, causing her to nearly hit her head on the armrest. Pearl either didn't notice she almost hit her head or she was completely unbothered by it.

“Which is something you do after someone just as politely hits you off the sidewalk with their guitar,” she teased.

“Oh my god, I hate you. I’m going to bed,” Trixie said, already on her way to the bathroom.

“Bye loser,” Pearl called after her.

When Trixie finally got to her bed she remembered that she had promised to call Adore. She groaned and grabbed her phone from the nightstand. _This better be at least somewhat important._

She secretly hoped Adore wouldn’t pick up, so she could go to sleep, but unfortunately, she picked up almost right away. “Hey, what’s up?”

“You told me to call?”

“Oh yeah, shit, I forgot about that.” Great, the last thing Trixie needed to hear was that she also could’ve gone to sleep without having to call Adore.

“What did you want to talk about?”

“I haven’t told Courtney, yet, but I’ve been offered to play in Chicago this month.”

“Oh my god, congrats!” Trixie was too tired to sound enthusiastic, but she tried her best to do it regardless. She was honestly happy for Adore. She worked really hard and it seemed to be finally paying off.

“Thanks! I was wondering if you wanted to have my gigs at The Closet until I come back.”

“Of course, thank you so much for thinking of me,” Trixie said. “Hey, I’ll talk to you again tomorrow, okay? Have to wake up early.”

Trixie was already half asleep when she hung up her phone. She still had a little more than six hours left to sleep before she had to wake up again.

 

* * *

 

It was 7 AM when Trixie shuffled into the diner in her baby blue work uniform. Way too early for anyone to work but she needed the money more than she needed the sleep.

“Good morning, Trixie pixie,” as expected Tammie Brown, a regular at the diner, was already enjoying her morning coffee as Trixie took her place behind the counter.

“Good morning, Tammie. How are you today?” Trixie asked with a smile.

She liked Tammie, she liked the weird stories she told, and she liked the weird remarks she made while Trixie was working. It kept her entertained in the mornings while she poured damping coffee in the cups of the town’s zombielike population until they felt human enough to go back outside.

“Oh, I’m doing just wonderful,” Tammie answered, and soon enough Trixie was wrapped up in yet another strange story until another customer needed her.

A lot of people from the Diner’s surrounding area were regulars. She used to be a regular herself. Every weekend Trixie, Farrah, Aja, and their mom would have their breakfast at Queen’s Diner. Farrah and Aja still showed up regularly after school, claiming their spot next to the jukebox but their mom started to visit less when the girls got older.

It was funny how much the two girls reminded Trixie of herself and Shea when they were their age. They even used to sit in the same spot as Farrah and Aja when they hung out in the diner. Shea was Trixie’s high school best friend, and now she was her work best friend.

“No offense Trixie, but you look tired as hell,” Shea said when Trixie sat down next to her in a plastic lawn chair out back for a well-deserved break. Neither of them smoked, but they loved to sit outside during their break.

“I am tired. Adore still has no voice so I played at the Closet yesterday,” Trixie said while she stifled a yawn.

“Girl, you need to get some rest. You’re going to get a burn out if you keep this up,” Shea said.

“I know,” Trixie sighed. It wasn’t like she had a different option than to work, though. She needed to eat, she had rent and bills to pay, and a student loan to pay off. She also bought a brand-new autoharp last week and basically had no savings left because of it.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to work at The Closet tonight as well.” Shea knew Trixie and Trixie’s work schedule all too well. “You are,” she said when Trixie didn’t say anything.

“I don’t have much of a choice. I can’t keep showing up at my mom’s house because I need dinner,” Trixie tried to defend herself, knowing damn well that Shea was right. Trixie worked way too much.

“It’s not healthy. I’m going to take your shift tomorrow and you can have my tips.”

“Shea no, I can’t take your tips.”

“You really expect you’re going to be able to work tomorrow as well?” Shea wasn’t convinced at all, and it was audible in her voice.

“Okay, I’ll take the day off,” Trixie sighed. “But I’m not taking your tips.”

 

* * *

 

Trixie had downed two cans of Redbull before she left her apartment for work the second time that day and she still felt as if she could fall asleep any second. She was emptying a glass that consisted of more foam than beer, cleaned it, and started filling it with beer again. This time she tried to focus on not screwing it up like the last one so she could actually give it to the customer this time.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Courtney, Willam, and Bianca talking and looking in her direction.  

“Hey, Trixie?” Courtney asked.

“Yeah?” Trixie tried to sound as casual as possible while she mentally she prepared herself for yet another lecture on how she looked tired and how she was working way too much.

“Katya texted me, she asked about you,” Courtney said. She sounded as confused as Trixie felt.

“Oh- uh, Katya?” Trixie asked. Did Courtney know Katya? Was it even the same Katya Trixie was thinking about? It almost had to be, Trixie had never known a Katya before until recently.

“Katya Zamolodchikova,” Courtney said.

“What did she say?” The girl whose beer Trixie was still holding coughed impatiently, pulling Trixie out of the conversation for a second. She gave the girl her glass with shaky hand and a quick _I’m sorry_. Not only her hands were shaking her heart was also racing, maybe those two Redbulls weren’t as good of an idea as she initially thought.

“She asked on what dates you play. Do you know her?” Courtney asked.

“She works with my mom,” Trixie said. “I walked into her with my guitar last night. That might be why she asked.”

“That sounds like a euphemism for sex,” Willam said. Trixie rolled her eyes and ignored it.

“I wasn’t paying attention when I was walking home, and she was smoking a cigarette in the middle of the sidewalk,” Trixie explained.

“Oo, you invited her to see you play?” Willam said with a smirk.

“No, she said she wanted to come to see me,” Trixie said. Her co-workers fell silent for a second and even Bianca, who up until now had done a pretty good job at pretending that she wasn’t listening, looked up from what she was doing.

“What?” Trixie said when she realized her co-workers weren’t going to stop staring at her or break the silence. “Does she hate country music?”

“That bitch hates seeing live music,” Bianca said.

“Really? I bet she just asked to be polite, then,” Trixie shrugged. She wasn’t going to think more of it than she should. “How do you guys know her so well, though?”

“She used to come here a lot,” Willam said. “She kinda stopped coming when she got serious with her job.”

“She’s gay?” Trixie asked.

“Really, she’s gay?” Bianca laughed. “You literally do have the worst gaydar in the world.”

“Girl, I’ve only met her twice,” Trixie tried to defend herself, fully aware that it was useless. She really did have the worst gaydar in the world. It’s why she started coming to The Closet in the first place, it was the only place where she could be sure that the girls she’d be hitting on were gay.


End file.
